Murphy update

by Richard on March 26, 2011

I’m pleased to say that Murphy is settling in wonderfully. He is very eager to please and his training has got off to a flying start. He does suffer a bit from ’separation anxiety’, which has made the last few nights a bit trying but he is entitled to have a few issues and he already feels like a part of the family.

I’m guessing that having suffered from neglect, and clearly being a people-person, oops, I mean people-dog, the grooming probably feels like wonderful attention.

The first, indeed only (so far), dog I had came from a rescue home (we’d had another dog in the family previously but Roger was officially mine - and yes, we can all laugh at “Roger the dog” but he was called that as I was a fan of Swallows and Amazons and the other dog in the family was named Nancy after an Amazon so I named my dog after a Swallow). Anyway he’d been found as a runaway and his problem wasn’t separation anxiety, it was food. He would eat anything going - one year he even made it through one and a half Christmas cakes - but unfortunately his time as a runaway had damaged his digestive system so he couldn’t handle rich food, meaning his binges always ended up with a rather large amount of mess! Slowly but surely, over a number of years, and with a diet of rice, processed chicken meat, and rough dog biscuits he got over his difficulties. All this is by way of saying I’m sure Murphy will adjust to the idea that saying goodnight is not saying goodbye.